The Power of the One

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Masankho Banda tells the story of the three spirits that live within the drum

Every culture has the drum. In Africa we have the djembe, we have the gnoma, we have the djun-djun … and the drum is the central instrument that calls people together. The drum calls the rhythm of the songs, keeps the rhythm of the songs, and is also the thread. If you talk to someone who leads a drum circle, they talk about the One—the central pulse that holds the drumbeat together, no matter how simple or how complex. So, understanding the power of the One, no matter how many multiples there are (of people, of ethnicity, of religious identity), is what brings you together.

I grew up in Malawi, Central Africa, in the 1960s, as Malawi was coming into its independence. The missionaries had come 300 years earlier, and then came the British to rule over the people. It was the time that our country was choosing freedom. This part of the story is important, because as with other freedom movements around the world, ours had its foundation in music and dance. We found that solidarity came from singing and dancing together, and also, we found that if you play the drum, it doesn’t matter what language you speak, you can understand each other in rhythm. After all, we spend nine months under the primal drum of the beating heart. So as we were coming into independence, song and dance were a huge part of our life. We expressed our hopes, our intentions, and our disdain for oppression through song and dance.

Now, it’s very important to understand, however, that this was in a sense, a reemergence of song. Because when the missionaries came to Africa, one of the first things that they tried to do was to stop the drums, stop the dancing. “No dancing, bad. No drumming, bad. It is paganism, it is heathenism...” and all of these isms. And so, first they took it out of the church, and the next thing they did was take it out of the village. And we were told to be good and follow the British way of life, to wear suits and have our hair cut short, and all of those things. So as we came into our independence, the call rose among us: “Ohhh, let us pick up our songs. Let us pick up our dancing. Let us pick up our drums and all the ways of being in community that have been with us for as long a time as we can remember.”

In Africa it is almost impossible for a child to be born without hearing music. Each person has his or her own song. They are sung, called into creation with their own song. It enters and leaves with them. At every point in our lives, we are introduced to song, and introduced to rhythm. On some very deep level I have that understanding and that knowing of my being a child enveloped by a unique rhythm that is mine, that coexists with the unique rhythm of my brother, my sister, my cousin, and all of the other people in the village. And essentially, it is that understanding that comes to the forefront of a community understanding its connectedness. We are inherently, in ourselves, rhythm. The drum itself, as we understand it, is the coming together of three entities. In the beginning, the master drummer would go into the forest, and listen, and look to find the tree that will form the trunk, or what’s called the body of the drum. In those days, the skin was sometimes made from antelope hide. If an antelope wasn’t available, then goatskin, or cow’s skin. So there was an understanding of the spirit of the tree, the spirit of the animal, together with the spirit of the human. The three form a trinity—plant, animal, human. And in bringing that triangle together, anything in the middle of that triangle is energized by the synergy of those three entities.

...it doesn’t matter what language you speak, you can understand each other in rhythm

And the drum becomes not only an instrument of communication, or an instrument of creating rhythm, but also an instrument reminding us of our place in the triangle of life. not of our dominion over life, not of having life serve us, but of our place within the triangle of life. And like the impossibility of the two-legged stool, the drum is a reminder that without the tree, you have no body, without the skin you have no sound, and without the hand you have no one to bring the others together in music. So, the inherent connection between tree/plant, animal/skin, and heart/spirit is an unbroken bond that is the drum, its power, and its strength.

Angelique Kidjo has a song in which she asks, “Do you remember the sound of the drums?” What she is in fact asking is, do you remember who you are at your essential core, within the inherent rhythm of life? Do you remember who you are at your basic, primal place where rhythm occurs?

The village was a place I could go to remember who I was. When I danced, I was connected to source. In one language, God. In another language, the ancestors. When I would dance, I knew even as a ten, or twelve, or fourteen-year-old, that I was connecting with something else. You cannot stand on the shores of Lake Malawi, or under the bareback tree with 14 drummers, somebody playing the top part, somebody playing the melody, somebody playing the lead, and not be transported to the center of spirit, to the very center of who you are.

For more information, visit www.ucandanc.org

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